Saratok

The little town of Saratok, where we now live, has a population of maybe 10,000, similar to Locorotondo, our hometown in Italy.  For a white European it is a bewildering cultural melange of indigenous people (the Iban), Malays and Chinese, with an overlay of influences from the British and American Empires.

At first sight it's an unassuming little place with a town centre comprising a few grids of concrete two-storey buildings.  It has a daily market, two snooker halls, several mosques and Anglican and Methodist churches.  There are lots of cafes where you can get a square meal for around £1 and these are divided between muslim and non-muslim (where beer can be had).  There are no restaurants.

Popular local drinks include Nescafe with condensed milk and sugar, tea, also with condensed milk and Horlicks.  The food is mainly traditional Malaysian and Chinese, but the two small local supermarkets also do a brisk trade in baked beans and Quaker Oats.  This being a rice rather than a wheat based culture there is no great tradition of baking and the bread is mainly white sliced and soft, but one local shop sells the best egg custard tarts I have ever eaten.

White Europeans are rare here and despite all the weight I've lost in the last few years I feel like a lumbering pink hulk compared to most of the locals.  In a shop today two tiny Malay women with covered heads were looking at me and laughing in amazement.  The shopkeeper translated that they were saying "he is so tall!"  At this I bent my legs and said "is this better?"  Which induced hysterics.  Sometimes small children look at me with wide eyes and occasionally burst into tears.  People in the street regularly smile and say "hello" as to a welcome stranger and I find the best thing to do is to smile and say "hi" constantly.  After a while my face often sets into a rictus like grin with the strain.

There are plenty of cars around, but also lots of small motorbikes and scooters which are used to transport up to three people at a time (Mum, Dad and baby) and any amount of shopping, including gas bottles and small items of furniture.  They are routinely ridden over dirt roads that would be reserved in Europe for trail bikes and four-wheel drives.

Because the climate is hot and humid the air is alive with the smells of growth and decay, so that in the space of a few minutes one can encounter the scent of new mown grass, drains, rotting fish, spices and charcoal-grilled chicken.

In the residential areas around the town centre dogs, chickens and cats roam free and generally seem content to share their space with us humans.  In the morning I wake up to the sound of cocks crowing and the occasional dog howl.  Oh and the local clock tower, whose clock I reported in September has stopped, now has no clock at all, just a bunch of new signs.  I'm sure this is symbolic of something, but I can't think what.  I think I'm going to like it here.